Page 63 of Sincerely, Pack Pucked
A smile bloomed across my face. “I’ll remember that, candy talk is the way to woo you.”
Mable sat on the edge of her nest, crossing her legs, chewing happily. “You can sit down if you want,” she said, gesturing to the nest next to her. There wasn’t exactly any seating in her tiny dorm, other than at the desk chair in the far corner, so offering to let me sit on the nest made sense.
Still, it felt oddly intimate, considering the things we had done in that very nest a few months ago.
“Do you have class in the morning?” I asked as I took a seat. It was getting late, and given her pregnancy, she needed all the rest she could get.
She nodded sleepily. “I don’t, given it’s a Saturday tomorrow. You?”
“I’m free to sleep in all I want.”
Mable cocked her head to the side. “What’s it like being a hockey player? Saint told me a little about it, but I don’t really know much about your job. Do you just play at the rink? Do you travel? What does it all entail?”
The fact that she wanted to know more about my job made me inexplicably happy. “Well, we typically train five days a week in the off-season, like we are now. Sometimes that training is on the ice, sometimes it’s in the gym. We have several games per week during the season, which is typically between the months of October and April, although there are always outliers and exhibitions.”
“So, you’re doing a degree at the same time as the hockey season runs?”
“Yeah, it probably wasn’t the smartest move on my part, but I really wanted to have a backup career.”
She tilted her head to the side. “How come?”
“I have a family member who was a player. He injured himself in his early twenties, and after that, he was totally directionless. He never found something he enjoyed after the accident and never really settled into another career. Professional athletes don’t have the longest shelf life, and while we’re being smart and investing our money so that we’re set up for life, I still want a career, a purpose to fall back on.”
“That’s really smart—and you’re the only one studying?”
I shook my head. “Saint and Jasper take a few online classes. The university offers them for free because of who we are. Devin has his hands full managing our careers. I think Jasper wants to look at coaching kids.”
Mable snorted lightly. “That would suit Jasper, considering he’s a giant kid himself.”
“You’ve got him pegged. However, Saint is also a child himself. During our last team skate, he practically kidnapped the daughter of our team doctor and spent the entire time racing her on the ice. Joey loved it.”
“Joey? As in Joey Noble?”
I frowned. How did she know her name? “Yeah?”
“That’s Bethany’s stepdaughter!”
I racked my brain to remember the last team skate, and Jensen had, in fact, brought Bethany to meet the team. She was pregnant and they were blissfully happy. “Yeah, they bonded last year, didn’t they?”
Mable nodded. “Before she started babysitting Joey and bonded with her pack, she used to work at the same coffee shop as me.”
“Small world.” That little bit of information pleased me more than I thought it would, because it meant that when we tookMable around the team, she would have a friend. Most of the wives and girlfriends were wonderful and friendly with each other, but having someone she knew from before meeting us would probably be a bit more comforting, considering how shy she was.
A yawn escaped her, pulling me out of my train of thought.
“I can leave if you want to sleep,” I said. She was swaying slightly, clearly exhausted.
“No… stay,” she said, nestling down into her blankets. Mentally, I was already thinking about what kind of nesting materials she would like at our home. Her nest in the dorm was an explosion of pastels–would she want the same at our place? Hopefully, she would be spending more and more time at the penthouse as her pregnancy progressed, and I wanted her to be as comfortable as possible.
Jasper would probably want to take her to a nesting store and buy out the entire shop just to spoil her. But our Mable was stubborn, and I got the impression that it would be a while before she felt comfortable with that.
Until then, I would make our home as welcoming as possible for her.
We had a shocking lack of blankets at the penthouse, so the first thing on my list was a large, fluffy throw for the sofa. Of course, I would be the best heat source, but sadly, I couldn’t stick to her side like glue.
“The doctor mentioned… It’s kind of embarrassing, really,” she muttered sleepily.
“What is?”
